The U.S. The Department of Justice (DoJ) has finalized a rulemaking regulation concluding the implementation of Executive Order (EO) 14117, which prohibits the mass transfer of U.S. citizens’ personal data to countries of concern, including China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
“The remaining rule represents a significant leap forward in combating the unprecedented nationwide threat to public safety, which stems from our adversaries’ exploitation of individuals’ most sensitive personal information.” The Director of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Olsen.
“This robust national-security initiative ensures that individuals’ sensitive information is safeguarded from being compromised by hostile foreign entities, preventing any form of acquisition, including outright purchase or clandestine infiltration.”
Again in February 2024, U.S. The President has issued an executive order to mitigate the national threat arising from unauthorized access to individuals’ sensitive personal and government-related information, which poses a risk of malicious activities such as espionage, influence, kinetic, or cyber operations.
Nations of concern can harness their entry to bulk knowledge to develop, refine, or acquire advanced technologies like synthetic intelligence, by leveraging order and streamlining the process of buying information from business knowledge brokers and other companies, thereby accelerating innovation.
International locations of concern and targeted individuals may exploit this knowledge to gather information on activists, teachers, journalists, dissidents, political opponents, members of nongovernmental organizations, or marginalized communities, ultimately using it to intimidate them, curtail political opposition, restrict freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, or association, and permit various forms of civil liberties suppression.
The Justice Department’s rule is expected to take effect efficiently within a period of ninety days. The regulation outlines key takeaways regarding banned, limited, and excluded transactions; sets unit volume limits for activating the rule’s prohibitions and restrictions on confidential data exchanges involving large volumes of sensitive information; and specifies compliance measures, including civil and criminal sanctions.
This encompasses a broad range of knowledge categories: private identification data (including Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and many others); exact geolocation information; biometric identifiers; human ‘omics (genomic, epigenomic, proteomic, and transcriptomic) data; sensitive health information; and personal financial data.
However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that this rule neither specifies geographical constraints, nor does it exclude applications from the United States, thereby implying a broader scope of applicability. Residents are prohibited from undertaking medical, scientific, or other research in countries of concern.
“The ultimate rule does not preclude U.S.” The proposed sanctions would prevent certain individuals from engaging in commercial transactions, including exchanging monetary and other forms of intellectual property as part of the sale of goods and services with countries or designated entities of concern, or impose measures designed to achieve a broader decoupling of significant client, financial, scientific, and trade relationships that the US has with other nations.
